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BIOGRAPHY:
Ram Charan was born in Uttar Pradesh, India in 1939, and is currently almost 70 years old.
While growing up, he spent time in his family’s shoe shop, afterwards he earned a degree in engineering from Banaras Hindu University, and later in life got an MBA and a Doctorate at Harvard University.
After his early life studying he became a professor in several respected Universities including Harvard Business school, Boston University and Kellogg school of management.
A few years after he became a teacher he started doing Business consulting for companies such as GE, KLM, and Bank of america. He is also considered a writter and a speaker. Some of his books include “Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty: the new rules for getting the right things done in difficult times”, “Boards that deliver”, and several others.
A curious detail about him is that he is a workaholic, this is demonstrated in his personal life, he is unmarried and has no children. He has lived his entire working life jumping from hotelroom to hotelroom, never having a house to call his own, until recently, that he purchased his first apartment.
In the year 2000 he was elected fellow of the “National Academy of human resources”, becoming a distinguished fellow in 2005.

SUMMARY:
The introduction excerpt of ram Charan’s book “Leadership in the era of economic uncertainty” centers on the Dupont company and how the economic crisis has affected them, relating also the reaction of the CEO Chad Holliday whilst in a business trip in Japan.
The Japanese customers were primarily worried about the companies position due to the possible expansion of the crisis. After hearing about the problem, Chad Holliday returned to the U.S. to consider the present situation and to try and forsee its repercussions. They the reaize that this isn´t the companies personal problem but that it has a greater scale, its a global crisis. These types of problems call upon the ¨Corporate crisis plan¨, only used in extreme cases such as the 9-11 attacks.
Soon after, Holliday called up a meeting with Dupont´s leaders in order to inform employees about the situation, studying their thoughts to see if they could comprehend the situation.
Chad Holliday created a team of three top executives and put them in charge of the companies long term decisions in order to reduce costs. The result was a cut of 20.000 outside contractors that the company had previously hired.
Ram Charan concludes supporting Hollidays decision, insisting that he faced the problem head on without fear.